Donate one month's salary for flood relief: Sonia to MPs, MLAs

Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Friday directed all party Members of Parliament and Members of Legislative Assembly to donate one month's salary for relief work in flood-ravaged Uttarakhand.

Gandhi also directed all party MPs from Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha to give Rs 10 lakh each from their Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme fund for carrying out relief work there, said party's communication department in-charge Ajay Maken.

Congress currently has 203 members in the Lok Sabha and 72 in Rajya Sabha.

The party has also set up a Pradesh Congress control room at Dehradun to accelerate the relief work.

All India Congress Committee Secretary Sanjay Kapoor and the party's wing Seva Dal's chief Mahendra Joshi have been sent to Dehradun to monitor the work.

"All Pradesh Congress Commitee chiefs are being asked to send all the relief material from their states to Uttarakhand immediately," Maken said.

Terming it the "worst tragedy of the millennium", Agriculture Minister of Uttarakhand government Harak Singh Rawat said, "It will take us at least five years to recover from the extensive damages caused to the entire infrastructure network in the Kedarnath area, which is the worst affected."

Rawat, who had visited the Kedarnath area, said that he spent five hours there and was shocked to see the extent of the damage caused to the buildings and area adjoining the shrine.

Operations to rescue over 9,000 stranded in Kedarnath and Badrinath were stepped up with the deployment of 40 helicopters.

Minister of State for Planning and Parliamentary Affairs Rajiv Shukla said that he has donated two month’s salary for flood relief work.

In his tweet, Maken said that Gandhi, who undertook an aerial survey of Uttarkhand on Wednesday, will visit the affected areas and relief camps again.

She has also asked Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna to restore power and communication lines and speedily evacuate the people stranded there.

On Tuesday, Gandhi had spoken to Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and the chief ministers of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand to seek "timely and prompt" relief measures for flood-affected people in the two states.